Revolution in Peru

REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION

in

PERU

Published by

'he committee to support THE REVOLUTION IN PERU
First Printing, May, 1985

INTRODUCTION

A revolutionary war of great significance is
raging today in Peru. Although largely blacked out
in the U.S. press since the Comnunist Party of Peru*
(known as the "Sendero Luminoso ” or "Shining Path" in
the press) launched the armed struggle in 1980, the
Peruvian revolution has been the target of increasing
attention, and attack, in recent months.

Commenting on U.S. "hotspots" worldwide, Wil¬
liam Randolph Hearst, Jr., devoted several paragraphs
in a September 16, 1984, issue of the San Francisco
Examiner, to the "Maoist rebellion" in Peru, calling
it "potentially the most explosive situation of all
in the Western Hemisphere."

Yet, while many of the "hotspots" the U.S. is
presently involved.in are prominently in the news day
after day and get detailed analysis, the revolutiona¬
ry war in Peru has been only sporadically reported
upon, and then with a tint of bewilderment and sensa¬
tionalism; for example, headlines like "Peru, Corner
of the Dead," or "Red Rebs Machinegun U.S. Embassy in
Peru," or comments like the following from the Washi¬
ngton Post: "Sendero Luminoso remains probably the
most engimatic guerrilla movement in the hemi¬
sphere... it does not seek international allies and
there is no evidence that it has any." And, "Relati¬
vely little is known about Sendero , which scorns
traditional political propaganda as well as most
Marxists elsewhere. There is no evidence it has
received outside support."

*Abbreviated "PCP" for Partido Communista de] Peru

1

Translated, the PCP "enigma" is the fact that
while wars erupt all over the world with armies
trained, equipped and directed either openly or
covertly by either the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R., the
revolution in Peru is being developed politically and
militarily in opposition to both superpowers and
their blocs. It does not consider the Soviet Union,
or any other country today, socialist. All this is
not so "enigmatic" if one looks at the PCP's actual
wi it ings, and the party does seek international al-
1ies as shown by its participation in the Revolu¬
tionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) which was
formed by 17 parties and organizations worldwide in
early 1984. In fact, far from seeing the struggle as
an isolated one, the PCP sees it as an integral part
of a world revolutionary change. In their publica¬
tion Develop Guerrilla Warfare , they say:

We are firm practitioners of the great
principle of reliance upon our own
strength, as we are firm followers of
proletarian internationalism, unfurling
that immortal call of Marx and Engels,
"Workers of All Countries, Unite!" And as
communists we always raise up the three
great banners together of Marxism-Lenin¬
ism-Maoism, which demands of us that we be
irreconcileable enemies of revisionism and
all forms of opportunism, and in waging
the revolution in our country we serve the
world proletarian revolution which is
waged and will be waged until communism
shines over the face of the earth.

The strength the PCP is speaking of here is its
own people, and all indications point to the fact
that the struggle has grown significantly since 1980

.I gained broad support. In its report to the RIM

in May, 1984, the PCP stated:

COLOMBIA

ECUADOR

LORETO

MAORE DE DIOS

MOQUEGI

CHILE

BRAZIL

MOUNTAINS

I I JUNGLE 31

□ o

COASTAL PLAIN q

o

n\

■>

Where the armed struggle began LIMA ICAJ LAO

Vaoyi

HUANi

Taken from A World To Win, 1985,1.

BOLIVIA

...the People's Guerrilla Army, organized
in the first part of 1983, has become
several times larger through the massive
joining of peasants, especially poor pea¬
sants; the People's Committees have multi¬
plied considerably, and most importantly,
have developed in terms of their excercise
of state functions, and an Organizing
Committee of the People's New Democratic
Republic has been formed, while the Revo¬
lutionary People's Defense Front in the
countryside and Revolutionary People's
Defense Movement in the city are taking
form, with the centers of resistance as
their axis. Finally, 1983 saw more than
half of the 15,000 armed actions carried
out in the four years of armed struggle...

Among these more than 7,500 actions are in¬
cluded clashes in the northernmost jungle areas,
attacks on government institutions and military posts
in almost every department,* including in the moun¬
tains and mining areas, and attacks within all major
cities. In fact, this new offensive has completed .i
picture of a revolutionary army able to strike almost
simultaneously from one end of the country to the
oilier , mobilizing forces from diverse sections of the
people and areas. Today, even the Peruvian govern-
inont admits that what they used to call a "handful
ol delinquents" has become an army with real support
among broad strata of the population. This new
assessment of the situation is shared with U.S. lea¬
ders:

department is a political land division much like
a U.S. or Mexican state. Each of Peru's 25
departments is divided into provinces and has a
capital with the same name as the department.

4

in. Pu.tg.in administration plans to ask
•H'ji • ■ im t o double military aid to Peru
m» h i y« . it , which would make that country

• im i it • i«'.'»t recipient of U.S. military aid
In South America, State Department offi-

• lain .dd yesterday..."We want to encou-
i » i« tin- Peruvians to be in a position to
tight their own, significant internal
uIrtrulties." (New York Times, 1/30/85.)

Th« i- ore some of the factors that have led to
iti*. II government concern expressed in press re-
i tlu *t 'Ul I he situation being so explosive it could
* & »'n more dangerous than the present war in Cen-

i i • I Miner Ira.

• lit i M >RY and BACKGROUND

Win n t he Communist Party of Peru launched the
.." I »l niggle in 1980, the political-economic situa-
i lai in Peru was at an extreme: by 1979 the decade
* i* *i had begun with the then-ruling General Velasco's
i * ini . i ol; reform and an end to foreign domination
. nd»iiI m a foreign domination more intense than ever.

' an ill Velasco had come in via military coup to save

it. untry from President Belaunde in 1968. General

it . d. a Moved Peru from General Velasco in 1976.

h. I ii mde i ot.urned in 1980 via U.S.-orchestrated elec-

i i.'ii ; to save Peru from General Morales. Conditions
in i*. iu had become so heated because of the disas-
i i • 'ii » economic situation that foreign investors
I* ii « d chaos or even worse (for them), an uprising.

I it op t his ferment and bring Peru thoroughly back
fliit' the U.S. orbit, the U.S. fashioned Belaunde's
mi mu to democracy." Belaunde came with solid

m i. ni lals: raised and educated in the U.S. he was

5

On May 17, 1980, the PCP hangs a dead dog,
Inca symbol of contempt and attack, in front of
the Chinese Embassy in Lima, to announce the
beginning of armed struggle against the regime
and all who would betray revolution.

6

an old hand at fine speeches and rhetoric. He was
also an old hand at smashing popular uprisings, ha¬
ving unleashed the Armed Forces on the Peruvian peo¬
ple more than once in the '60s. Soon after his
election, he filled his cabinet with men like the
Wells Fargo Bank vice-president who was made Minister
of the Economy and Finance, and went on to remove any
remaining barriers to U.S. penetration. President
Belaunde is fond of blaming the "Senderistas" for
Peru's problems, but the massive foreign debt, the
IMF "austerity" measures that exacerbate the poverty,
the social unrest, the racism, the land question, the
Armed Forces running rampant over people — all this
was part of the Peruvian reality long before the PCP
launched the armed struggle.

Peru's domination by foreign powers began in
the 1500s with the Spanish, was assumed by the Bri¬
tish in the 1800s, and in the 1900s, fell to the
U.S., with penetration so thorough that by the 1960s,
Peru's oilfields, mines, sugar and cotton planta¬
tions, fishmeal industry and even its railroads,
phone company, electric companies and water companies
were mostly U.S.-owned.

During the revolutionary upheavals worldwide in
the 1960s, Peruvians also sought to free themselves
from the intolerable foreign domination that had con¬
trol of their economy, their political life and even
their cultural life. Massive popular uprisings,
including general strikes and peasant land seizures
shook the country. The military coup of 1968 was
carried out to deal with this unrest as well as
handle the crippling economic problems caused both by
this foreign penetration as well as the backward feu¬
dal land relations from the times of the Spanish.
Thus began the 12 year "revolution" of Generals
Velasco and Morales. Velasco nationalized those
industries, resources and services most in need of
modernizing; he initiated a land reform, mainly of
the coastal plantations, that left the same managers

and overseers in charge. He even began a mild flir¬
tation with the U.S.S.R., who nosed into U.S. terri¬
tory enough to become a major weapons supplier to the
Peruvian Armed Forces, but Velasco never broke with
the U.S. nor did he ever intend to. His main purpose
was to better exploit the Peruvian economy, not radi¬
cally change social, economic or political relations.
Peru fell under a top-heavy bureaucracy dependent on
foreign loans and aid from Western Europe and the
U.S.

Eventually the Velasco-led regime ran up a-
gainst the limits of this sort of expansion. Rising
political dissidence accompanied the economic fail¬
ures. When it became clear Velasco could no longer
serve as an effective demagogue of development and
leader of the dictatorship, he was replaced by Mo¬
rales Bermudez as head of state. Although Morales
cut back considerably on many of the failed programs,
Peru's economic crisis continued to develop as the
grip of foreign capital — particularly U.S. —
squeezed the country. Peru increasingly became a
debtors' prison for its people. For years, the gene¬
rals welcomed injections of huge amounts of capital
from international financial institutions, both pub¬
lic and private, for "development projects" that used
Peru's oil, copper and other natural resources for
collateral. One manifestation of the inevitable cri¬
sis appeared when international trade prices fell on
the commodities Peru exports during the worldwide
recession of 1974-75, and Peru could not keep up the
payments on the interest of its loans, let alone the
principal. The IMF and other U.S.-led institutions
began to demand severe austerity measures of Peru in
exchange for refinancing the debt (and not taking
even more severe measures to gather repayment). In
1983, Peru was paying one-third of its national bud¬
get to "service" (make repayment on) the national
debt. Today, Peru has one of the highest per capita
debts in the world, $13.5 billion (NYT, 4-14-85), for
a nation of less than 18 million people.

8

Translated into human terms/ the infant morta¬
lity rate is among the third or fourth highest in the
Western Hemisphere. Unemployment is officially at
41%. Caloric consumption, low by U.N. standards all
over the country, falls to only 420 calories a day in
some parts of the Sierra. The prices of staples, go¬
vernment-subsidized, are the first to rise when the
IMF "austerity measures" are imposed; some items like
sugar are rationed even though Peru is a sugar¬
exporting country. Medical services for the poor are
almost non-existent. And despite the fact that Peru
has a very rich intellectual culture, the majority of
Peruvians are illiterate.

The interior has always been the hardest hit by
the effects of foreign domination. Like any other
"third world" country where development and progress
are geared directly to the "Great Powers'" orbit,
certain areas (in Peru, generally, the coastal areas)
are built up while other areas are left to rot. In
Peru, the areas least useful, and expendable, econo¬
mically, to foreign capital are the relatively inac-
cessable interior — the jungle ( Selva ) and mountain¬
ous regions (Sierra). Even today the best roads in
the mountains are those ordered built by the Incan
empire in the 1400s. It was in this interior, high
in the mountainous regions of Peru's poorest area,
that the Communist Party of Peru first began the
Armed Struggle.

BEGINNING of the STORM

The Communist Party of Peru is called the " Sen-
dero Luminoso " by the press because of a student
newspaper it once published under that name. It
comes from a quote by Jose Carlos Mariategui that
revolution is the shining path the world proletariat
must take in order to liberate itself and all of

9

humanity. Although the party, which was formed in
1928, affiliated with the Third Internationale of
Lenin and Stalin, after Mariategui's death, revolu¬
tionary struggle was set aside for over a generation,
until the early 1960s, when Mao Tsetung's polemics
against the direction the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union was taking led to a reawakening of this
spirit and a rediscovery of Mariategui. Later in the
decade the influence of the Cultural Revolution would
also be extremely important. Pro-Cuban forces which
had not made any break with the Soviet line took up
armed struggle and were crushed. For the Marxist-
Leninists in the PCP, the armed revolution was an
immediate responsibility, and any further inactivity
was intolerable. As Comrade Gonzalo, then the leader
of the party's work in Ayacucho was to declare, "It
is not enough to criticize revisionism. We must
assume our own responsibilities."

Under the leadership of Comrade Gonzalo, the
party was rebuilt along revolutionary lines through
the next 15 years; this took many difficult twists
and turns and was to result in several major splits,
but the result was a steel-forged and conscious force
of cadres ready to begin a people's war. Most of
them were the sons and daughters of peasants, and
they spent 10 years living with their people in the
mountains. In 1979, they spent a year of concen¬
trated preparations, including the study of the con¬
ditions and feelings of various social strata, which
along with geographical considerations, was used to
decide where the armed struggle would begin. A party
military school was established to train these cadres
to lead the armed struggle. (World to Win, 1985/1 p.
35) ^

They launched the armed struggle in 1980 with
the bombing of polling places because they wanted to
expose the whole "return to democracy" as a patent
fraud, a sham manipulated by the U.S. and promising
only more of the same for the people. More
importantly, they wanted to show that the path for¬

10

A group of guerrillas of the PCP pose in an
Andean mountain area some 600 kins. SE from
Lima. Their ages vary from 12 to 27.

ward was the shining path, the armed revolution, the
only real alternative for the majority of Peruvians.

By 1982, when they published their manifesto,
Gus^rilla Warfare , with a bright red cover,
and distributed more than 100,000 of them throughout
Peru, they could proclaim:

The Communist Party of Peru, the organized
vanguard of the proletariat, founded by
Mariategui and rebuilt through more than
15 years of stubborn struggle as a
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party of a new
type, assumed its historic role, deter¬
mined to fight for power for the class and
the people, and set burning in May, 1980,
the invincible and ever-growing flames of
armed struggle,of guerrilla war, in our

11

country. This struggle is linked to, and
rooted every day more deeply in, the class
struggle in our land; it will soon become
a raging hurricane of armed battle, to
demolish the old, rotten order, and bring
to life a really free country with sove¬
reignty and well-being for the millions of
exploited and oppressed.

The PCP gets its weapons in raids and attacks
on the enemy, or else it uses traditional home¬
made weapons like this huaraca or Inca sling¬
shot, filled with dynamite or homemade bombs.

12

That they did unleash a "raging hurricane" soon
proved true, especially in the impoverished high¬
lands. A major battle was fought March 2, 1982, with
a pre-dawn raid on the prison in Ayacucho city, 250
miles south of Lima. Even the international press
took notice of it:

That night, approximately 150 "delin¬
quents" blacked out Ayacucho city, the
capital of the department. Firing automa¬
tic weapons stolen from the police and
using Inca slinghosts (called huaracas) to
hurl dynamite, they overran the city's
maximum-security prison. There, they sang
revolutionary hymns, raised red flags, and
freed all 247 prisoners, a number of whom
were suspected of being terrorists
(sic)...( Atlantic , May, 1984)

In the towns and cities, fierce armed actions
have also taken place. One of the most spectacular
actions of this kind occurred in April, 1983, when
high tension towers were dynamited* and the capital
city of Lima darkened for an entire night. The
guerrillas then hit specific targets like police
stations, banks and the huge $250 million Bayer che¬
mical factory, which was completely destroyed. A
blackout like this does not affect the slums, which
have no electricity, but the lighting of huge bon¬
fires in the shape of hammer and sickle (to signify
the worker-peasant alliance) above the city in the
hills has a profound psychological effect, both on

*Dynamite is plentiful in this mine-rich country, and
obtainable. The miners — mainly indigenous and from
the peasantry — suffer under incredible work
conditions and were the first from the working class
to support and join the revolution.

13

those forces supporting the guerrillas as well as on
the enemy. During the recent visit of the Pope to
Peru, PCP supporters answered his call to lay down
their arms (made just at the time the U.S. adminis¬
tration was asking Congress to double military aid to
Peru) by blacking out Lima as his plane landed and
lighting a huge hammer and sickle on the hill of St.
Christopher (patron saint of travelors) above the
city.

The "hurricane" has blown inside the prisons as
well, brought by the prisoners themselves through
intense struggle with the prison authorities. In El
Fronton, the notorious island prison off the port of
Callao, hundreds of " Senderistas " are jailed:

The terrorists (sic) have a privileged
position in El Fronton: they have conver¬
ted the jail into a sort of terrorist
university; they have theib "liberated"
territory (the Blue Pavillion), their own
mural newspaper, radio parts to receive
messages, weekly newspapers to "raise
consciousness" to which their visitors
subscribe and even their own red flags fly
over the island. ( Oiga , 12/21/83; Peruvian
magazine)

The article neglects to inform the reader that
this situation has been brought about despite extreme
and sub-human conditions in the jail: tuberculosis is
endemic; food is nearly non-existent and must be
supplemented by donations from relatives and friends
(when allowed); prisoners have been shot down in the
courtyard for singing the Internationale ( Caretas ,
5/18/83; 9/20/82). Red flag flying or no, items of
the color red and particularly red cloth are strictly
prohibited in this prison, but nevertheless, a red
satin banner was smuggled out as an international
exchange for May Day, 1983. On it was inscribed "To
the Revolutionary Prisoners of the U.S.!" and the

14

Banner from revolutionary prisoners
of El Fronton to U.S. revolutionary
prisoners , May Day, 1983.

15

names of hundreds of prisoners.

The high morale of the prisoners in El Fronton
and in other prisons around the country was described
in a NIT article, 9/7/84:

Amid broken windows, swarms of flies and
the stench of an open sewer, the
guerrilla prisoners — young and middle-
aged men with Indian features — were
writing, weaving or reading books from
their small library.

Frayed volumes had been stitched with
cotton thread: texts of Mao and Lenin, a
Bible, poetry from Spain, the writings of
Jose Carlos Mariategui...

In a woman's prison, the article continues,

In Peru's traditional society, many people
have been shocked by the fact that women
have not only joined the guerrillas but at
times, have reportedly led attacks.

Holding her baby, born in jail two
months earlier, Lilian Torres, 23 years
old, said she had worked as a maid and
street vendor in Lima since she was 17.

She had been afraid at first "to join
the party," she said, but became aware of
her responsibility when she learned about
"the class struggle" and the "offensive of
world revolution" taking place in Peru.

"Now I am happier," she said. "I have
stopped being a vegetable."

16

rural organization

The media often claims PCP actions have no
rhyme or reason. Actually, to anyone familiar with
Mao's writings, the strategy is both evident and
logical. Roughly, it is to develop a United Front
which includes many strata in society, but whose core
is an alliance of peasants and workers led by the
vanguard of the proletariat. This united front is
built around a program of "New Democratic Revolu¬
tion," whose main targets the PCP identifies as impe¬
rialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism which
is aligned to both). This revolution is itself a
prelude to the socialist stage of revolution. The
strategy is to "surround the cities by the country¬
side: "

The mountains and countryside are
a powerful and natural base for any
revolutionary war in our country. Ours is
a peasant war, led by our party, which is
converting the countryside into the armed
bastion of the revolution, in the concrete
form of base areas — embryos of the New
State of workers and peasants — and
isolating the reactionaries and their
imperialist masters in the cities. There,
the proletariat and the masses burn the
bottoms of the enemy's bloody paws mainly
through armed actions which serve the
struggle in the countryside, the center of
the storm, and prepare the conditions for
the final assault on the cities and the
army that maintains it. ( Develop Guerrilla
Warfare)

17

In order to establish and develop these rural
revolutionary base areas/ peasant support and parti¬
cipation are absolutely vital. No guerrilla war can
be fought without them. Peru's prime minister, Luis
Percovich, described this quite frankly in an inter¬
view he gave to the Mexican newspaper, Excelsior,
9/24/83:

.••in Ayacucho, the Senderistas operate on
foot in small groups of militants armed
with machine guns and revolvers, who
attack with the massive support of the
peasants carrying sticks of dynamite,
steel weapons and simple farm implements.

These last are called " guerrilleros de
la noche" (night guerrillas - tr.), that"
is, those who ordinarily live in the same
zone where the attack takes place, and
later return to their usual occupations;
the initial group will eventually leave
the zone to them.

In other cases, the guerrilla is
massively accompanied by the entire
population of a community or county that
has decided to support them...

Much of the media has claimed that the peasan¬
try supports the guerrillas because it is "terrified"
of them — a difficult proposition given the words of
Prime Minister Percovich, and a truly ridiculous idea
given the massive government terror against the peo¬
ple. In fact, this is the very first time in their
centuries-long history that the indigenous peasantry
has been called upon to rise up like human beings and
really take history into their own hands.

The Andes constitute what one writer has called
a "'fourth world enclave' in a 'third world' coun¬
try." Audrey Bronstein describes this "fourth world
enclave" in her book The Triple Struggle in Latin
America :

18

In southern Peru, 60% of the rural
population are without access to health
services. Three-quarters of rural
children who start school do not even
finish the primary years. Services such
as clean water and electricity are
available only to people living close to
the urban centers, and even then, only to
those who can afford it. In fact, 83% of
the rural population are without clean
water; 98% have no sanitation facilities.

Illiteracy is high amongst the
peasants, higher still amongst the women.

The Indians speak Quechua or Aymara to
each other, using Spanish only when they
themselves have to go to town or when an
outsider comes to the village. Very few
women in the remote areas speak Spanish.

The peasants of this interior, feudal terrain
are the descendents of the indigenous peoples the
Incas brought together in one enormous empire
stretching from Ecuador to Chile. Their life expec¬
tancy is 44 (on the coast it is 54, lower than Ban¬
gladesh). They have always worked land belonging to
others; their status was so low that when the hacen-
dado or latifundista sold his land, "his" Indians
were included in the deal. The much touted "land
reform" of General Velasco in the '70s was described
by secrtary general of the Confederation of Peruvian
Peasants thusly: "For us the state became the new
landowner and maintained not only the same forms of
exploitation, but above all, the same methods of
production." (The Guardian, 2/5/81) Even this farce
of land reform was centered on the coast, and barely
affected Ayacucho department, Peru's poorest and most
neglected area.

Along with their terrible poverty, the peasan¬
try suffers a cultural oppression as well: they are
utterly despised, their language, dress and customs

19

are cause for derision and contempt. To be called
indio " (Indian) in Peru is to be called "nigger."
One of the worst insults you can throw at a Peruvian
is " !Indio tienes que ser! " ("You've got to be an
Indian!") It should come as no suprise that it was
among these people that the PCP found its first base
of support.

The RIM report quoted in the introduction des¬
cribes the popular support the PCP has earned over
the past five years. The support arises directly
from the participation of the peasants. No "condes¬
cending saviours" are placed over them; they them¬
selves must actively take part in all aspects of this
struggle. In the "revolutionary base areas" which
are now being developed, the People's Committees are
the embryos of the New Democratic Republic.

The first People°s Committees were formed
toward the end of 1982, on the basis of committees
formed by the peasants to divide up the harvest in
the areas where the peasants under PCP leadership had
overthrown the landlords and local authorities. Soon
the newly formed committees took on the additional
tasks of organizing the collective planting of crops
and work in general, and increasingly, other func¬
tions of political rule as well.

In 1984, the Lima press published what they
claimed was a captured PCP document describing the
first popular meeting in a Lima shantytown that gives
an idea of how these popular organizations govern:
it was decided to ban gambling, drugs, fortune tell¬
ing, continual drunkenness, beating women and other
family members, robbery, bullying, and police colla¬
boration. Penalties for violations ranged from
small fines, to cutting hair, to execution in the
case of police agents. The press made much of this
last penalty, -but without such enforcement, the peo¬
ple would have no power to impose their will and
would be afraid to step forward and join the
struggle.

There are still few places in Peru where the

20

authorities can't enter if they amass enough force,
and when they do come in, they always take brutal
reprisals, including public torture and execution,
especially of those openly allied with the guerril¬
las. However, their ability to do this is severely
limited in many areas and can be applied to only a
few places at one time. Large areas of the country,
in fact, remain out of their control. Because of
these reprisals, it became impossible to choose com¬
mittee members by mass vote at a public meeting. Now
they are chosen secretly, by village representatives.
Committee members are called ’•commissars" because
they have a commission (revokable) from the people;
there is a secretary, a commissar of security to
watch over pro-government elements in the village, a
production commissar who regulates production and
commerce, someone to register births, marriages and
education, etc. and someone who heads up all the

r/£RRA mom

mm DE GUERRIUi

PCP graffitti: "Long Live the Poor Peasant",

"Land To Those Who Work It", "Guerrilla War"

21

various organizations the villagers have formed like
the poor peasants' movement, the class conscious
laborers and workers' movement, the women's movement
and even a children's movement which began completely
unforseen by the PCP because of the demands of the
children themselves. (See, World To Win, 1985, 1, pp.
38-39)

People's spirits have been lifted considerably
with the dream of actually changing society from the
bottom up becoming a reality before their eyes, and
the peasants and working people and poor of Peru have
taken up some highly advanced notions of the real
possibility of changing not only their own status,
but providing an example to the people of the world:

We have printed the poster announcing the
formation of the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement. It will
continue to be used mainly for propaganda
and agitation. It has been distributed to
the party organizations, platoons of the
People's Guerrilla Army, People's

Committees — unions and peasant

organizations in general. The majority of
the posters were sent to the countryside
for the education and mobilization
principally of the poor peasants. In the
cities it was centered especially among
the proletariat and also the poor working
masses who live in the slums, as well as
among the university students. The center
of the campaign is the RIM as a new world
unification of communists faithful to
Marxism and the explanation of the
revolutionary content of the slogan "Break
the Chains" and "Proletarians of All
Countries, Unite!" is of great importance.
(Report to the RIM, ibid)

22

;l*ro!eturios rtc twins los psiisi s, imios!

MOVIMIENTO REVOLUCIONARIO INTERNACIONALISTA

1‘VRlllK) (IIMI MM \ |>H CI.KI

The poster the PCP distributed throughout Peru
announcing the formation of the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement.

In the first few years of the armed struggle,
the PCP lost a large number of its original members,
but its ranks have increased greatly since then, and
their influence in the rural areas has grown to such
an extent that by June, 1984, there were about
100,000 people living under and participating in the
new political power led by the PCP.

23

24

free meche!

This letter was sent all over the world from
Peru in July, 1984:

"This is to tell you that Laura Zambrano
Padilla, a teacher, known as Meche and a great
revolutionary fighter, was arrested this past
July 20. We must develop a campaign to save
her life, and against the cruel and savage
torture to which she has been subjected. They
are trying to kill her — this was openly
threatened by the head of DIRCOTE (Police Anti¬
terrorist Command) himself, whose name is
Gastelu, and it must be exposed.

"Here a campaign is developing to defend
political prisoners and denounce the ’disappea¬
rances': Since the struggle has reached its
highest level, once again they are carrying out
massacres and bodies are appearing in the hills
and ravines. On July 25, 80 Republican Guards
(prison police), called the Llapan Atiq in
Quechua, went into the prison at Callao where
84 women fighters are locked up. They violen¬
tly abused the women, robbing them of all their
possessions that might be worth anything, and
destroying everything else. They threw in tear
gas bombs and beat the women brutally. Ten
women were injured in this way: comrades Delia
Taquiri, Elizabeth Romani, Dihla Ruiton, Juana
Cuyubamba, Jenny Rodriguez, Isabel Gonzales,
Nancy Burga, Dora Munoz, Isabel Carhuentico,
Aida Zaire, Lina Romero and Marina Infanzon.
But of all this, the centre of the exposure
campaign should be the teacher Laura Zambrano,
known as 'Meche.' M

25

ROLE of WOMEN

As the NYT article of 9/7/84, pointed out, "In
Peru's traditional society, many people have been
shocked by the fact that women have not only joined
the guerrillas, but at times have reportedly led
attacks." Many units within the People's Guerrilla
Army — established in 1983 and with a reported
strength in the several thousand — are commanded by
women as well as made up of a majority of women.
Women are also in the top ranks of party leadership,
which gives some idea of the content of this war
being waged in a country where the "right" of the
landlord and his cohorts to rape peasant women at
will reveals women's overall situation in the old
society. This position has been described in detail
as the "triple oppression" (see for example the
above-cited book by Audrey Bronstein), i.e. the
oppression of being women, Indians, and peasants or
workers in a society that despises and abuses all
three.

Women leaders and fighters of the PCP have been
targeted for special abuse by the authorities. One
case in particular brings this out: in 1984, Profes¬
sor Laura Zambrano Padilla was detained during a
police sweep and accused in a sensationalist campaign
in the press of all manner of deeds against the
regime, including, most critically, of being "an
important ideological leader of Sendero." A letter
sent from Peru (see box) describes her as "a great
revolutionary fighter." She has been the target of
the police anti-terrorist command, an organization
formed expressly to deal with urban supporters of the
PCP, and the head of this fascist-type unit has
openly vowed to kill her. Her family and friends, as

26

Eyacucnans come to hono r one of their o wn
[funeral of Edith Lagos.

well as a wide range of political forces, charge she
has been tortured, and an international campaign has
been launched to free her.

Earlier in the struggle, another arrest — and
murder — of a woman fighter also became a national
incident in Peru. In September, 1982, Edith Lagos,
was captured, tortured and bayoneted to death in
Ayacucho by Civil Guards enraged at the fact that an
Indian peasant, and a 19 year old woman at that, had
dared defy their authority. They banned any public
funeral for her, but the people of Ayacucho came out
en masse. Over 30,000 people — in this city of
80,000 — filled the streets to carry her coffin
draped with the red PCP flag.

27

■■■

mmmm

mrnmmmtm

STRUGGLE in the CITIES

The struggle in the countryside — the main
focus of the people's war — interpenetrates with the
struggle in the urban areas. During the 1984 May Day
campaign to agitate around the formation of the RIM,
the PCP managed to create a good deal of public
opinion:

We should emphasize that because of the
concentration of the workers and of
greater literacy in the capital, almost
30% of the leaflets were distributed
there...The welcome that the posters and
leaflets have had among the government
workers is outstanding (500,000 state
workers held out for more than three weeks
in an indefinite strike) since agitation,
with the RIM documents, was carried out
in the midst of their strike, especially
in their protest marches and

confrontations with the police. (RIM
report, ibid)

The PCP has boon increasingly successful build¬
ing support among strata .Like industrial workers,
especially from smaller factories, where even worse
conditions prevail, and middle sectors; though some
workers and people more in the middle sectors might
have gotten a few crumbs during Velasco's days, now
Ui.'Y am in the throes of a 30-50% reduction in real
w "i' ■ since 10 years ago, 130% inflation, and the
I 'i 1 'U»■' • ' 1 1 I i I II e or no future.

1 'he iMfty'a broadest support in these urban
"■ 1 •■"•ay, liMwcvei , comes from the poor and dispos-

• to 1 •*• •' • ui ban slums. Some of these are

?H

Lima shantytown; the shacks are generally roof¬
less because Lima gets little or no rain.

on

presently workers, while many are unemployed. Since
the '60s, peasants by the thousands have been driven
off the land and into the coastal, urbanized areas.
The joke among Peruvians has always been that "since
Lima won't go to Peru, Peru will come to Lima." Lima
grew from 1.5 million in 1961 to over five million by
1980. These new arrivals live in an expanding wheel
of roofless shacks euphemistically called " pueblos
jovenes" ("young towns") by the government. They
have no water, electricity or bus service, and three-
fourths of Lima's six million plus population lives
there. This is the "mob" Lenin encouraged his fol¬
lowers during the Russian revolution to put them¬
selves at the head of, and the PCP has done that, not
only to support the rural war, but to carry out
propaganda actions in the city as well. In one form
of struggle, hundreds and sometimes thousands of
these people are mobilized in a matter of minutes for
a lightening rally, or to surround and destroy a
government building or other target and then scatter
again.

Though the cities are still the main bastions
of the regime, it can hardly be said the authorities
feel "secure" in their realms. Lima has been under
martial law on and off for months. Within a 72 hour
period in July, 1984, 19,000 people were captured in
police sweeps in Lima, Ayacucho and other cities.
Police raided bars, restaurants, gambling halls,
lores, plazas, and streets detaining everyone who
i "ii hi not present proper ID or who aroused their
hi;. pi cions in any way (such as being too poor, too
, iing nnd/oi too Indian). It was during this sweep
in Lima that Professor Laura Zambrano Padilla was

•( t ii i »< |

A! ih. I imo of this police sweep, the PCP
' . . .mI , . ,ni »«'l out a number of military actions,
.i |n i I ic lf| hmk1<*ilv Pay and July 23 is Air Force
... 1 t|n | ii him mI wanted to put on a big show
t | a . i .i i <ni uni -inppm t for the regime, police
, in. I i i n in. I i. I it »n . notwithstanding. The

30

Air Force in particular went all out with parades,
and Belaunde gave an impassioned speech, accusing the
revolutionaries of being "drug traffickers and outsi¬
ders" bent upon destroying the very foundations of
the country's institutions. The PCP responded with
heavy attacks on those institutions, and the govern¬
ment forces protecting them. Electricity was cut
that same night in more than a dozen cities, an army
garrison at Huancayo, 180 miles east of Lima, was
attacked, and other army posts, police stations,
government buildings, etc., were hit hard in the next
few days. The offices of t’w ^ viet airliner Aero¬
flot, located in the ultraluxuri^ is Sheraton Hotel in
Lima, were destroyed also.

Again, the newspapers were filled with head¬
lines indicating official amazement and outrage over
the fact that women had led many of the attacks: "A
Woman Leads Assault on Oil Refinery in Uchiza;"
"Terrorists Led by Women Burn Furniture Factory
'501■"...

WHO ARE the REAL TERRORISTSp

In December, 1982, President Belaunde, who had
proved his worth as a democratic leader in the '60s
by supervising the massacre of over 8,000 rural poor,
found himself in the throes of a recurrent nightmare:
the Andes were on fire again. His bloody imposition
of rural "peace and quiet" had not lasted long.
Worst of all, the leadership of this blaze appeared
to have far better understanding of how to wage
revolution and far deeper ties with the peasantry
than any he'd ever seen. He declared the territory
an emergency military zone and sent in 3,000 Civil
Guard under General Noel. As commander of three
departments comprising the military zone (Ayacucho,

31

Huancavelica and Apurimac), General Noel (or "Papa
Noel" — Santa Claus — as the inhabitants of Ayacu-
cho derisively called him) established a record for
rape, corruption, summary execution, torture and
looting. Despite these tactics, Noel made no pro¬
gress at all in eradicating the guerrilla. In fact,
the revolutionary forces grew so much that the police
chief of Ayacucho publically declared, "Ayacucho is
80% Senderista." Noel was replaced by Huaman who was
replaced in August, 1984, with Mori. The regime was
determined that the status-quo, the age-old lot of
the peasantry with all its attendant misery, was
going to be enforced and upheld at any cost, even as
the PCP cut the ground out from under them.

Contingents of the various branches of the
military had come in with the Civil Guard, but the
Army did not have official control. In 1984, the
president did grant the Armed Forces full control,
since the Civil Guard was suffering from "acute prob¬
lems of morale." 5,000 regular troops (Army, Ma¬
rines, Air Force) entered the area. Recently, massive
scandals involving these troops and particularly the
Marines, have shaken the country, as mass grave after
mass grave has been discovered, full of their vic¬
tims. Headlines, even in such conservative publica¬
tions as the newspaper La Republica, proclaim "They
Killed Them At the Foot of Their Graves, Sadisti¬
cally, Without Compassion."

The "necessity" of such tactics was made clear
in a NYT interview with Ayacucho's police chief,
quoted above regarding the composition of Ayacucho:
"80% Senderista." He also said, "What is needed here
is the Argentine solution," an unsubtle refferal to
the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in
Argentina by the military in an effort to root out
resistance to their rule. Prime Minister Percovich
whom we quoted earlier about the "massive support" of
the peasantry for the PCP, said, in reference to this
Argentine solution, "We know how to use the examples
wo have been given." Statements like these make clear

32

the lie — and the vicious purpose — behind the
common "wisdom” in the U.S. press that in Peru "poor
peasants are caught in between the Army and the
guerrillas." And the government armed forces also
make this clear daily with their bloody deeds —
fighting the only way a reactionary force can against
a genuine people's war.

Disappearances, torture and execution of
suspected guerrillas and sympathizers are no new
feature of the military's counter-insurgency
campaign. Amnesty International first produced a re¬
port in September, 1983, drawing President Belaunde's
attention to the beginnings of official terror
tactics. "But in the president's own words, it was
'tossed into the wastepaper basket.' Equally
detailed reports from local sources have been
similarly ignored. The state attorney, Zegarra
Dongo, reported in February that there had been 1,500
recorded 'disappearances' in Ayacucho." (Andean
Group Report, 8/31/84)

Equis X, a Peruvian magazine, claims over 5,000
disappeared in 1984 (9/3/84). and for the hundreds
who search for their missing relatives and friends,
the burden is compounded when they come to the make¬
shift morgues knowing that recognition of one pre¬
viously-arrested person would bring further reprisals
upon them and their families. Furthermore, there is
growing evidence the actual reporting of these atro¬
cities, with all their gruesome headlines and offi¬
cial horror at the "excesses," is being allowed pre¬
cisely to inhibit and terrorize the local population.
It is worth quoting the Americas Watch report on
this:

Despite suggestions that cases of police
brutality are individual excesses, all
evidence suggests that this is a part of a
calculated effort to gain control of the
region. Moreover, it appears that the
military have decided to make no secret,

33

as least in Ayacucho, about their own use
of terror...a counter-insurgency expert in
Ayacucho...said that the security forces
purposely leave bodies on public display.
f, This raises doubt about who did it, and
dissuades people," he said — he alluded to
the Argentine anti-guerrilla campaign of
the 1970s when thousands of guerrillas,
sympathizers, and peaceful opponents of
the government were killed...

Sinchi patrols terrorize communities
where Sendero has passed through.
Villagers report that Sinchis and Marines
rape women of all ages, steal valuables
and animals, and burn homes. In some
cases, they take prisoners, while in other
cases, prisoners are summarily shot. It
is rumored among some resentful soldiers
the Sinchis get a special combat bonus to
do their dirty work.

The "Sinchis" referred to are Green Beret-
trained special forces within the Peruvian Civil
Guard. There is a particularly blatant picture of
one of them on the cover of Caretas magazine,
1/10/83. He is at a training camp, stripped to the
waist, coming at the camera with a knife and covered
with blood. Such are the forces of civilization who
are gallantly keeping the country safe from terror¬
ism.

A more recent atrocity involving innocent civi¬
lians was the "massacre at Huanta," which was given
passing mention in a NYT article about "official
terror" in Peru (9/2/84), but elsewhere in the U.S.
press described as a "Senderista" massacre. What
Peruvian newspapers report is that a Marine contin-
< i< *iit , supposedly acting upon the word of an infor-
m it it , invaded an Evangelist church in a tiny village
in lliitmtn and dragged out six parisioners during
i ■ i me I I iI led them. Family and friends who

M

protested the murders "disappeared." When mass
graves filled with hacked-up and tortured peasants
began to be found in the area/ public outcry became
very great; then La Republica reporter Jaime Ayala
"disappeared" after entering Marine headquarters in
an attempt to investigate the stories. The Marines
finally admitted publically they were responsible for
the deaths of the Evangelists/ whom they claimed were
revolutionaries. They proved their claim by pointing
to the supply of wooden rifles in the church used for
the Christmas pageant. As for the mass graves/ the
Marines said they were graves used by the guerrillas
to bury their comrades fallen in battle, but some of
the victims in the graves were last seen in Marine
custody, and in December, 1984, the body of Jaime
Ayala was found in one of them.

Clearly then, police and Armed Forces' atroci¬
ties go beyond those suspected of outright guerrilla
activities. Newspaper reporters (see box on Uchurac-
cay), trade unionists, even government officials
have become victims. The national leader of the
National Agrarian Confederation, Jesus Oropeza, was
found savagely tortured and mutilated in a shallow
grave after his arrest by the Civil Guard. Priests
have been persecuted and harrassed, and urban,
church-backed welfare projects threatened with bomb¬
ing. It seems the authorities' position is so weak
that even the most mild, reformist kind of work or
questioning of the status quo is a threat.

TO FIGHT A WAR

The PCP is fighting a war in order to overthrow
those who would maintain a status quo that is stead
ily drowning the majority of Peruvians in death and
misery. Such defenders of the status quo — Peruvian
or otherwise — and their we11-equipped, well ! rained

35

UCHURACCAY

In January, 1983, the government announced
what they termed a serious reversal in peasant
support for the guerrillas: the Civil Guard

Command in Ayacucho smugly reported that 11
"Senderistas" had been murdered by the villa¬
gers of Uchuraccay, a tiny village high above
Ayacucho in Huanta. Eight reporters from va¬
rious left-wing newspapers convened upon the
area to investigate the reports, which they
considered very suspicious. Their subsequent
murders, again supposedly by the villagers of
Uchuraccay, hit the international press. Mario
Vargas Llosa, a novelist of world-wide repute,
was chosen by President Belaunde to head up an
"investigatory commission" to find out how the
villagers "mistook" the reporters for guerril¬
las. The Civil Guard's original report claimed
the reporters had carried the PCP flag upon
entering the village and could not communicate
with the Quechua-speaking villagers. This
report was immediately suspect: four of the

reporters spoke Quechua fluently, and one was
from the area. The reporters' guide was the
cousin of that reporter from the area.

Vargas Llosa did not come up with some
unsophisticated fairy tale. His investigation
was published internationally (the NYT Magazine
gave it a cover story) and was very well-
wi He never gave a clue that anyone else

1 •« -it!«••. I ho villagers was suspected of killing
Hi* M*|»orlors. He claimed the reason the
i I I i i k i 1 led the reporters was that they

.tiiqhl I "'tween their primitive, ignorant

it I till m new war which they didn't

understand and didn't want any part of. The
fault, Vargas Llosa went on, lay with all
Peruvians for abandoning these difficult
regions and their impoverished inhabitants;
yet, he made it clear the Indians were really
"beyond help" due to their primitiveness.

"All Peruvians" refused to believe the
investigation report. A straw poll taken in
Lima at the time the report was published
showed that only 13% who read it believed it.
The reporters' families, their employers, other
journalists and lawyers, etc., demanded a fur¬
ther, non-government investigation. The scan¬
dal became so great that even forces within
Belaunde's government — who are counter-revo¬
lutionary but have some tactical disagreements
with the regime — were anxious to try and deal
with it.

By December, 1984, a Court of Inquiry con¬
vened in Ayacucho, set up to try some of the
villagers, established that Sinchis and other
government forces were present at the time of
the murders of the eight, and that the village
headman was a former lieutenant in the Peruvian
Army. It was also established that the 11
murders the reporters had gone to investigate
were also committed by Sinchis, and that the 11
were youth between the ages of 13-17. Vargas
Llosa was put under house detention in Ayacucho
for his role in what all of Peru has come to
see as a whitewash of a foul crime. The villa¬
gers on trial were eventually released (as was
Vargas Llosa). The NYT, of course, has not
seen fit to publish a word of this.

37

armies and police forces — do not fade quietly from
the scene when change is demanding or a future pro¬
posed that does not include their persons, positions
and privileges. So, of course there is "violence
from both sides." The guerrillas have to confront
and deal with not only the Army and the Civil Guard,
but also local petty tyrants, bullies, collaborators
and paramilitary bands organized by rich landlords
and the authorities.

When the armed struggle first began in the
mountains, many of the most aggressive counterattacks
were carried out by such bands recruited among rich
peasants and actual criminal elements. A major re¬
cruiting promise appears to have been the opportunity
to rape and loot at will. They were led by retired
non-coms and sometimes by counterinsurgency forces
and bear a striking resemblance to the U.S.-backed
contras in Nicaragua. Whatever crimes they committed
could conveniently be ascribed to the revolutiona¬
ries: if they assassinated villagers sympathetic to
the PCP or succeeded in killing a guerrilla unit, it
became a case of "peasants killing guerrillas," and
if they in turn were wiped out by the guerrillas it
became a massacre of innocent peasants by mindless
fanatics.

By mid-1983, the revolutionaries had managed to
destroy most c.f these bands. Though the regime and
its U.S. advisors have not given up using the tactic
of divide and conquer — and since there are many
different strata in the countryside, it is a very
useful tactic — there are limits to such bands,
especially since the revolution is genuine and grow¬
ing and the motivation of bullies like these is the
fear and bribery of bigger bullies. Now, government
policy is to not give them arms which they could lose
willingly or unwillingly to the guerrillas. (World to
Win , 1985, 1, p. 38)

Another target of the revolution is public
officials, petty tyrants who have run rampant over
til® peasants for years. Reportedly, these officials

3fl

are at first given three warnings, and if they don't
take the warnings and flee, they are dragged into the
village plaza and put on trial in front of the pea¬
sants, many of whom will step forward and denounce
them for their abuses and demand their execution.
Again, without such enforcement, the peasantry and
party would have no power, and people would be afraid
to step forward. Newspapers in Peru estimate that
over 25,000 such officials have seen fit to flee
their assigned areas rather than face their "consti¬
tuents" in a public trial.

Recently, the official tack has been to label
the guerrillas "drug traffickers" and a serious coun¬
terinsurgency campaign has begun under the guise of a
U.S.-funded, $30 million "cocaine eradication pro¬
gram." This is taking place in the jungle highlands
of Tingo Maria and the Huallaga River valley an area
which until recently was not considered to be under
the POP's influence or penetration. For a long time
the peasants there have been dominated by powerful
cocaine gangsters. The U.S.-trained and supervised
antinarcotics unit operating in the area never saw
much action before their first clashes with the guer¬
rillas, which says- something about their drug-regula¬
ting duties. In fact, the national police complained
that they had been surprised by the guerrilla influ¬
ence and attacks there because they didn't have any
agents in what has been widely known as one of the
cocaine capitals of the world. After the offensive
against the guerrillas, the action was reported in
order to "prove" the PCP is in league with the drug
traffickers. But even the Lima press pointed out
that if that were so, why then did the guerrillas
have to fight with stolen army guns, shotguns and tin
cans filled with dynamite and hurled from huaracas
when the drug dealers are well-equipped with automa¬
tic weaons, sniperscope rifles, speedboats, helicop¬
ters and small planes?

39

WHICH ROAD to FOLLOW?

On June 22, 1984, the PCP launched a new mili¬
tary campaign called "Begin The Great Leap," calling
it "the first of various successive campaigns with a
view towards the political conjuncture in which we
are developing in this country, part of which are the
1985 (presidential - tr.) elections. The current
campaign is developing as part of the political stra¬
tegy of 'conquering bases,' (that is, revolutionary
base areas) and it serves to concretize the orienta¬
tion of ’Strengthen the People's Comnittees, Develop
the Base Areas, and Advance the People's New Democra¬
tic Republic.'" (RIM report, 1984) 100,000 leaflet
posters produced and distributed by the PCP in 1984
vividly illustrate this: on one side in red ink is a
huge figure surging forward with rifle and red flag
under the Quechua words, "Let Us Rise Up Together!"
An army of workers and peasants advances beneath him
and the quote, from Mao, is, "Within a short time,
millions of peasants will rise like a storm...all
revolutionary parties and comrades will be put to the
test before the peasants, and they will have to
decide which side they are on."

On the other side, in black ink, is a depiction
of the "electoral circus," a game of dice played by
the candidates over piles of slaughtered bodies, the
death tolls of the "authorities" represented in the
drawing by the vampire bat Belaunde, the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. kibbitzing off to the left and the sour¬
faced, fully armed military, death squads and vigi¬
lantes off to the right, ready to step on stage when
they are needed. The quote is from Marx: "Every
few years the poor are allowed to choose which mem¬
bers of the oppressor class will represent and crush
I In>in in parliament."

40

41

DENTRO DE POCO MILLONES DE CAMPESINOS SE LEVANTARAN
COMO UNA TEMPESTAD ... TODOS LOS PARTIDOS Y CAMARADAS

REVOLUCIONARIOS SERAN SOMETIDOS A PRUEBA ANTE LOS AoOStO-84

CAMPESINOS Y TENDRAN QUE DECIDIR A QUE LADO COLOCARSE.

Mao Tsetung

V^Jr-3

The PCP considers the elections a circus be¬
cause none of Peru's problems will be settled by
them. As the old saying goes, "If elections had ever
changed anything, they would be illegal." The two
main dice players (candidates) are the heads of the
APRA party and the IU or United Left. APRA is a
party formed in the 1930s as an "insulator," keeping
the Peruvian industrial workers away from "communist
influence," according to one author (David Chaplin,
The Revolutionary Challenge and Peruvian Militarism ).
Stephen Gorman, edtior of Post-Revolutionary Peru,
describes APRA as "social democratic by necessity
with overtones of neofascism." APRA flirted heavily
with the military regime in the '70s and lost many of
its working class adherents in the process, though
recently it has recovered some ground, especially
among the more middle and military strata, and
probably has the best chance of winning the *85
elections.

The United Left, or IU, stands to run second
and has been put forward very strongly by various
American "leftist" parties, as well as the govern¬
ments of the U.S.S.R., China, Cuba and some European
organizations as a real alternative for change in
Peru. It is a coalition of reform parties including
the pro-Soviet Peruvian Communist Party and the Pa-
tria Roja which supports the present regime of China.
Their goal is to share power with the present goven-
ment, to wheel and deal for "a piece of the action,"
and they do have some credibility as the "loyal
opposition," the obligatory left standard bearers in
democratic Peru. They managed to get their candi¬
date, Alfonso Barrantes, elected mayor of Lima in
1983.*

*The PCP called for a boycott of the '83 elections.
In parts of the country, abstention reached over 60%
even though it is illegal to abstain. In parts of
the Andes, the Civil Guard enforced that law by
massacring dozens of peasants that had abstained.

43

The first thing Mayor Barrantes did when he
came to office was fly to Europe to beg the IMF for a
loan of $150 million for reform programs in Lima.
There is a joke in Lima that every time a new Peru¬
vian is born, he has by the mere act of his birth
incurred a debt of some $2,000 (referring to the per
capita foreign debt). Mayor Barrantes saw fit to
augment this debt in order to obtain one daily glass
of milk for each poor child in Lima, the latter a
goal he did not achieve.

This sort of drop-in-the-bucket reform and its
attendant obligation is an example of Barrantes 1 view
of the Peruvian people and where he thinks they fit
into his scheme of things. His view of the revolu¬
tion is much the same as President Belaunde*s. As
the revolutionary forces grow and storm their way
onto the political stage, all factions, including the
legal left, find themselves more and more forced to
take sides, whether it be with the government and
Armed Forces and all the powers they represent, the
so-called "democratic institutions" of the country,
or with the peasants and poor and working people
demanding by force of arms to take over their own
destiny. When President Belaunde finally turned over
control of the counter-insurgency to the Armed
Forces, Mayor Barrantes applauded the action: "We
consider that this decision is a step that the Presi¬
dent of the Republic should take, but we affirm that
war measures are insufficient if they are not accom¬
panied by social and political measures to stand up
to terrorism (sic)." In order to achieve such mea¬
sures, he said, what is necessary is "the unity of
all democratic forces against this phenomenon of
Senderism." When asked about the massacres by the
police and army in the emergency zone, he stated that
criticism against police "excesses" should not become
a "condemnation of the institution."

Along with the illusions of the "electoral
circus" public opinion is also being prepared for a
military coup. What is happening is that the econo¬

44

mic crisis — conditioned by the overall world situa¬
tion — and all of Peru’s other major social prob¬
lems, as well as the advance of the revolution, are
causing the rulers of Peru to fight among themselves
as to how to manage all of this. And a military coup
is one option that some powerful forces favor.

THE SHINING PATH

As these crosscurrents rise, the regime
responds the only way it can, with more force and
more weapons. A report compiled for the Heritage
Foundation of Washington by Edward A. Lynch (now a
Central America consultant for the White House)
stated, "If the U.S. waits too long, saving Peru will
require more effort and more money than preserving
Peru...full scale war would be far worse than the
current El Salvadoran war." (Cinncinnati Enquirer,
12/24/83) The latest news is that the U.S. is going
all out to "preserve" Peru. Belaunde met with
President Reagan in Washington in September, 1984,
and Peru was granted some temporary and minor relief
from the IMF's relentless demands. As we stated at
the beginning, the Administration has asked Congress
to double Peru's military aid to enable the military
to fight a war of counterinsurgency. Human rights
organizations in Europe report the presence of
foreign mercenaries and the beginning of aerial
bombing, strategic hamleting and the use of napalm in
the Andes.

In July, 1984, the Peruvian and U.S. navies
engaged in joint "wargames" maneuvers which included
the landing of paratroopers and frogmen on the Peru¬
vian coast. These wargames were televised onto giant
screens placed in what official spokespeople called

45

"strategic locations," apparently in an attempt to
intimidate pro-PCP forces and boost confidence and
morale among the regime's supporters.

The U.S.-U.S.S.R. contention in this arms
buildup is also evident: the army still has 160
Soviet advisors from the days of General Velasco, and
many of their arms are Russian-made, making it neces¬
sary to go to the U.S.S.R. for parts. General Julian
Julia, a hard-line, pro-U.S. military man was recent¬
ly appointed Minister of War; one of his first duties
was to go to an arms show in Moscow. The U.S.S.R.
has dangled an offer of $50 million to fight the
guerrillas before Belaunde; it was just after that
offer was made that Beleaunde visited Washington.

But the qreatest concern for all these forces
in Peru is the growing strength and influence of the
PCP and the Maoist revolution it is leading. The
onslaught of imperialist powers vying to provide Peru
with the latest weaponry, the sabre-rattling of war-
games, the mass graves, mass arrests, torture and
ocher atrocities really point to the fact that there
is no way out for these frantic defenders of the
status-quo, and that the insurgents have dealt them
some hard blows. Nor will such methods deter the
revolutionaries from their shining path:

Tne struggle is taking a very cruel form
and the bloodshed will grow as the
reaction launches its counteroffensive;
thus the repression applied so far will
worsen in every way. But taking into
account the grave problems and
contradictions which burden the reaction
in this country, and above all, the
objective conditions and the development
of our revolutionary forces, we have the
ability and the resolve to pay the
necessary price, no matter what, to carry
forward the armed revolution in our
country, unshakeably decided to build the

46

New State which has already begun to be
built, since, as Lenin said, "Without
state power, all is illusion." This is
our committment and responsibility to the
Peruvian revolution and even more to the
world revolution of which we are a
component part and which we serve and will
serve.

The armed struggle being led by the PCP is the
most significant revolutionary struggle being waged
in the world today. It is a tremendous material
force on the side of peoples yearning to be free of
the powers in this world that hold us all hostage to
their empire building and rivalry. It is a revolu¬
tion that should be supported and upheld by progres¬
sive people, and all moves to attack and slander it
should be exposed, denounced and opposed.

47

Those of us who live in the U.S.A., the
country that is most responsible for the misery
and poverty of the Peruvian people, have a
special duty to refute the slanders and attacks
upon the Peruvian revolution and its leader¬
ship, the Communist Party of Peru.

The Committee to Support the Revolution in
Peru exists exactly for this purpose. We want
to popularize the development of revolutionary
struggle there and disseminate the truth of
what is really happening. We have a slide show
with presentation and music, books and informa¬
tion, and we are available for forums, panel
discussions and radio shows. We also have
buttons, posters, and are preparing a t-shirt
for the near future.

We encourage all progressive and revolution¬
ary-minded people to join the Committee and/or
contact us to arrange for the above-mentioned
activities and materials. Funding, to keep up
our support campaigns, research and the disse¬
mination of materials and information, is ur¬
gently needed: we encourage you to both con¬
tribute and fund-raise.

THE COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT THE REVOLUTION IN PERU
PO Box 1246
Berkeley, CA 94701
(510) 644-4170